Original subtitles

Chris Gibbons thinks he's found the house of his dreams.

But it soon becomes a house of horrors. That house, it's his, and he doesn't

want you in it.

An evil spirit infects Chris's every waking moment.

And when night comes, things take an even darker turn.

I would hear my dad screaming in the middle of the night. To defeat the

entity, Chris will need to summon unimaginable strength.

To save his home, his family, and his sanity.

In America, there is real evil.

It lurks in the darkest shadows in our most ordinary towns.

Between the worlds we see and the things we fear, there are doors.

When they are opened, nightmares become reality.

I ask for whatever lives in this cabinet to be ripped from the earth and sent to

a place where evil lives.

I ask for whatever lives in this cabinet to be ripped from the earth and sent to

a place where evil lives.

The Gibbons family plays traditional Irish music at events in their hometown

of Grand Rapids, Michigan Chris an attorney and his wife Kay have four

children Andrew Samuel Sarah and Patrick Chris believes the band is an important

family activity The family band puts everyone in a position where in order to

make music You have to work together.

The family has no idea, but working together just may save their lives later

on.

The Gibbons have outgrown their old house, and Chris thinks he's found a

perfect new one in a neighborhood called Heritage Hill.

Heritage Hill is a nationally recognized historic district.

All of the houses have to be maintained in their original condition, so it is,

to a degree, a step back in time.

The house seems to fit the family's size requirement.

The house was large.

It had great bones.

Everything seemed to be in place. It just needed a lot of love and attention.

Come on.

Imagine what it's going to look like when I'm done with it. I was getting a

hankering to take on a new project.

It took nine years to renovate their old house.

Kay does not want to spend another nine on this project.

The house needed a tremendous amount of work.

And this was a great concern to me because I just wanted to move in and get

on with life.

I know this is your dream house, but the kids need a house they can live in.

I said, I'll tell you what, I'll get it done in a year if that makes you happy.

Really? would you sleep?

I knew he could do it because he's crazy that way. If he sets his mind into

something, he's going to do it. I made the offer that day to purchase the

house.

Chris works nights and weekends to get the house ready to move in.

The one year ticking clock for renovation begins.

A week after buying the house.

Chris is in the basement, clearing out the previous owner's junk.

There was quite a bit of the workshop material left.

I decided to hang on to some of the hand tools because they appeared as though

they might be useful. You never know.

Little does Chris know the significance of the former owner's possessions.

Chris works in the basement past midnight.

He feels someone or something watching him.

There would be a sensation that someone or something was kind of like hanging

over you, but there really isn't anything there.

Chris attributes this sensation to exhaustion.

A few months later, the Gibbons family moves into the house.

What do you think?

Is it big? Is it amazing?

Yeah. You like that, huh? It's huge.

Biggest kid, biggest room.

It's the kids' first good look at the house.

Sarah Gibbons is seven years old.

She appears in shadow to protect her privacy.

The first time I saw the house, I remember I thought it was huge, like a

castle, like it was made for royalty.

The major renovation projects are done, but Chris still has to put on the

finishing touches.

Two nights later, Chris is up long after the family is asleep, restoring the

living room to its former glory.

I hear a breath, like a gasp. I just couldn't figure out what possibly

could have moved enough air to have unsecured the plastic in the first

place.

The next morning, Kay makes breakfast for the children.

Where is your brother?

Upstairs. Patrick?

Patrick?

Patrick, breakfast!

Okay.

Patrick?

Mommy.

There's my little man.

Are you ready for some breakfast?

My son wasn't really scared. He was just like, hmm, there's a man in this room.

I thought

it was just a figment of his imagination.

I was just thinking he made it up.

That's what little kids do.

Three months after moving into the house, Chris finishes the restoration of

the living room.

You guys ready?

Yeah! You sure?

Yeah! Here we go.

Ta-da!

Wow!

Stage one of the restoration is complete.

Ahead of schedule.

Can we come see? Come on in. Let's go.

The work and the result exceeded my expectations.

It was a lot for Chris.

He had a full law practice. He renovated the house, but he made it work. He got

it done, and he's the man.

And I knew that the rest of the work was going to be done within a year. I think

I'm going to take a nap.

You deserve one.

Kay?

Kay!

Kay!

I'm here.

When I woke up, it was in the middle of the night and not the afternoon.

Nothing. It was just a crazy dream.

I mean, it's kind of an odd dream to have, but who knows what your

subconscious can cook up.

Chris is afraid to explain to Kay what he actually saw in his dreams.

They fall back asleep, unaware that their real nightmare is just beginning.

Chris and Kay Gibbons are renovating their dream home, unaware they have

stirred up much more than a century of dust.

On the same night that Chris has a horrifying nightmare, Kay experiences

her own chilling reality.

It felt like a hand was on my ankle and moving up my leg.

Like somebody was rubbing my leg.

Why? No.

I think we have mice.

I've been over every inch of this house. We have no mice.

No, there was something crawling up my leg. Look, there's nothing.

Come on.

Let's go back to bed. It wasn't a mouse. It wasn't Chris.

I didn't know what else it could be.

So we went back to sleep, and that was that.

A few nights later, Chris is once again having trouble sleeping.

I felt near my head tapping on my pillow as though someone were pushing on it,

you know, with a finger.

You don't really know what to think of that at first.

And you think, well, whatever.

And it happens again.

Chris and Kay have the same paranormal experience, independent of each other.

Over the next few weeks, Chris and Kay try to ignore the bizarre incidents in

their home.

Chris continues working half days in his law practice, restoring the house in the

afternoons and evenings.

As I hit the ground, I wake up completely unnerved in an utter state of

panic.

I felt as though all of that actually happened to me. I felt completely

assaulted. It was, to me, a real assault.

Over the next month, Chris is haunted by nightmares of his own death.

that blur the line between his dream world and reality.

Stop.

Get out!

Chris suspects the recurring dreams are paranormal in nature.

I concluded that there was an entity, a spirit in my home that did not want me

there. And the fact that I couldn't see it and couldn't fight it didn't mean I

didn't feel the desire.

to defend myself, to me it was an assault.

Chris does not reveal to his children his suspicions that the house may be

haunted. He does not want to scare them.

But Chris's secret can't be kept for long.

I was upstairs playing guitar, and then all of a sudden, just clapping.

Andrew, son, come on. Calm down.

All right, the house is 100 years old.

I mean, every now and then, you're going to get a pop and a crack.

But not in perfect rhythm.

We tried to tell him there's a logical explanation for your experience, and he

was quite adamant that there was not a logical explanation for what he had

experienced. The logical explanation is this.

Kay and I had reached the point where we believed we were dealing with a

spiritual problem in terms of a ghost.

Our initial reaction to our son was to waylay his fears.

We certainly weren't going to do anything to encourage the idea that

there's a ghost in the house and it was in his room haunting him. But he really

wasn't buying it.

Chris and Kay realize they can no longer try to ignore the strange activity.

We have to do something.

I'm working on it.

We decided I would.

called the priest because we felt that we had a spiritual problem on our hands

that was beyond our capability to deal with.

Hey, Father, how you doing? Good morning, Chris.

Chris finds even broaching the subject of a ghost difficult.

Well, we've been having some issues at the house.

I informed him that the entire household was experiencing odd occurrences, that

it was disruptive to the house.

My son, we're all spiritual beings, but ghosts as you're describing them, I'm

afraid they don't exist.

My suggestion would be for you to go home and pray with your family.

The priest declines Chris's request for a blessing of the house.

Well, thank you, Father.

I appreciate your time.

But to battle the supernatural in his own home...

Chris will have to find his own strength within and unite his family in the

fight. We felt like we were on our own.

This was our problem, and we were going to have to solve it.

The Gibbons family is trying to come to grips with a dark spirit that seems to

be haunting their house.

Chris Gibbons goes to the library and checks out every book he can find on

ghosts and hauntings.

I did what I naturally do, which is try to define the problem, define what it is

I'm dealing with.

What is the risk?

What is this spirit capable of? I had really no idea.

Can it attack my family physically?

I mean, the idea that...

There can be ghosts that start fires and your house burns down, or people get

pushed down the stairs, or the idea of a spiritual possession.

What's all this stuff?

Research.

I mean, I've got to figure out what we're up against.

I didn't want a full-scale war in my house with a spirit.

What's in this folder?

I pulled some of the city records.

For more clues, Chris pulls city hall records on the house's history.

He discovers the century-old home had just three owners before he bought it.

Then, he finds something intriguing.

Here you go.

Chris has no idea he is looking at a photo of the man his son had seen in the

hallway. That's who Sarah talked about.

Chris and Kay decide to ask neighbors about the home's previous owners.

I knew the family that lived here. They lived here a long time.

They learned the most recent were a married couple who lived there for 50

years. The husband died in the home 20 years earlier.

The widow remained until she moved into a nursing home just before the Gibbons

family moved in.

Thank you, folks. Appreciate it.

I think I know what's going on with our ghost.

You know, what if it's the dead husband of the widow? The theory for me was that

maybe because his wife had not passed, he was kind of lingering behind, waiting

for his wife to join him on the other side before passing on. What are you

thinking?

I think I want whatever's in this house out and gone.

Chris and Kay have a hard choice to make.

Lie to the children to keep them calm or be honest?

Christopher and I decided we need to tell the kids that we think there's

spirits in the house.

Heavenly Father.

At last, Chris and Kay acknowledge what the children have known and been talking

about for weeks.

We decided that we would pray as a family.

We would pray for the sanctity of our home.

We would pray for lost souls.

Amen.

When we prayed together, it definitely made Me feel safer.

After the prayer, paranormal activity in the house seems to stop for several

months.

Family life resumes as normal.

We're thinking, well, this is good. You know, the spirit left.

Months later, Chris is at a neighbor's party.

As entertainment, a psychic offers free readings.

What's up with that?

She's a psychic.

She'll tell you fortune.

Yeah, that's what I need is a fortune.

Come on. It's just for fun.

Nah, man. I don't believe in stuff like that. You look like you could use some

fun.

How's it going?

You might want to take a little easy on me. I just... I really don't believe in

this stuff.

Are you trying to restore the past?

The past of a grand old house?

She was perceiving my house, so I became very interested in what this psychic had

to say.

Give me something from it.

Do you have a key?

The psychic hones

in on the spirit living in Chris's house.

There's someone unwanted in your house.

Someone not living.

She says it's a former owner and that he is very attached to the property.

He's a lost soul.

And I asked her, why won't he leave?

I asked her if the ghosts were waiting for his wife to pass before crossing

over.

I hate that woman.

The psychic becomes momentarily possessed by the spirit haunting Chris's

home.

I'm sorry. That wasn't me.

Her response was, he's not waiting for her. He's just in the house because

that's his place.

He loved living in that house, and it's his, and he doesn't want you in it.

Chris's encounter with the psychic seems to reignite his conflict with the entity

in his home.

Chris starts having his dreams again, these nightmarish dreams.

Chris's recurring death dreams are back.

Only this time, they are more frequent and more violent.

You get to the point you don't want to go to bed.

Because you know what's coming.

What's coming is a horrible experience where you're being brought to a

physical, violent death.

The entire family now feels

the strain of the paranormal entity in their home.

Sarah often has trouble sleeping.

No one felt comfortable in the home. When you were alone in the house, you'd

hear the knob shake a little bit, and then you'd hear footsteps or just creepy

sounds. You tried to blame it on the wind, but it really wasn't the wind.

Chris Gibbons is terrorized by an unseen entity in his dreams But his family

now fears their waking hours

He

looked at me for Well, it was probably like three seconds, but it seemed like

forever that he was staring at me.

I was absolutely terrified

Hey, princess.

What's going on?

Hey.

What's the matter?

It's okay. You can tell me.

I... I saw the ghost.

Where?

Standing in the doorway.

Chris instantly knows that the entity in his dreams...

is the same one appearing to his children.

Let's look back here.

News that the ghost has physically appeared to his daughter affects Chris

even more than the terror he experiences in his dreams.

It attacks his core mission as a father.

When the ghost involves the children, you know, that dynamic changes, because

now the people I'm supposed to protect, I'm not protecting.

Chris is not sure how to protect his family against something. He doesn't

understand He continues the restoration of his house this he

knows how to do

What happened?

For Chris, the dream of being suffocated was the worst one yet.

Why don't you go upstairs?

Try to get some rest.

For what?

So we can do it again?

The nightmare is an escalation that makes sleep almost impossible.

Everybody likes to go to bed when they're tired.

Everybody likes to wake up rested.

The assaults and the dreams act to deprive you of that basic kind

of normal human function.

A week later, Chris and Kay have two friends over for drinks.

Yeah, we're trying. You know, it's been a labor of love.

I was listening to everybody. It was really nice to have friends over.

And I couldn't take it anymore.

It's been very hard.

Kay is really kind of the rock in the house. For her to have an emotional

breakdown like this, just out of the blue, was very unusual.

Hey, what's wrong?

I didn't want to tell you. What happened?

Earlier that day, Kay had an experience in the basement.

I had a feeling that something was not right.

K senses that the ghost is showing her a scene from the past, a mysterious image

of violence committed against a ghost child.

I could feel her. I could feel her soul. She was scared.

She was nonexistent, but she mattered.

It was horrible.

I think something horrible happened in this house.

Kay fears that the ghost, while living, may have abused a child in their

basement. She has no idea who the child might have been.

I absolutely perceived that event to be a threat to my wife and my children.

Absolutely. I know someone who might help.

Their friend suggests they contact a local spiritual healer.

We're Catholic.

I mean, we just can't.

At this point, I was looking for any help I could get. At this point, we'll

just try anything.

The next day, the spiritual

healer and her husband, who works with her, arrive.

The healer has agreed to share her story anonymously, as she rarely becomes

involved in the cleansing of spirits from a home.

When I initially got the call, I was concerned about the whole family, so it

was primarily my intuition that said, I need to go right away.

Perfectly restored.

Did you do the work yourself?

One of the first questions she asked me was, had we been renovating in the

house? Yes.

Why? Do you think it has something to do with what's going on?

The entity was present in the house when they bought the house. When they

renovated the house and disturbed all of the dark places, that's when this energy

became much more active.

There was a very strong draw to the basement.

Something in the basement was not right.

I can sense...

Do you feel what I feel?

Very much.

You need to stay back here. You two need to stay back here.

We walk into that room with the intention of getting rid of that thing,

and it knows that immediately.

It doesn't have to be told that out loud.

It was very clear where it was emanating from immediately.

Can we open that?

Yeah.

Go ahead.

They identified that the ghost was in the cupboard, and they had told me he's

in that cupboard.

The spiritual healers believe they have cornered a ghost, the dark energy that

has been terrorizing the Gibbons family in their home.

It's the same closet from which Chris was attacked in one of his dreams.

No matter what happens, just stay there, okay?

It tried to push back, and it tried to find ways out of the circle that we were

creating around it.

And we just kept pushing, pushing.

until eventually it shot out the window all at once.

It's outside now.

Should I get rid of his workbench and all his old tools?

That's a good idea.

Make sure you put it outside the boundary line, though.

There may have been some attachment by this entity to his personal things that

remained in the house.

So if we wanted to avoid that connection, then we had to move that

connection off of the property.

The spiritual healer suspects the ghost may be still lurking outside.

Chris wants to remove the workbench and tools, anything tangible that may have

been connected to the ghost when it was alive.

The work benches down there have been built by him. I hope he would face the

same fate that his bench had, which is destruction.

And so what we're going to do is create a perimeter here where we're going to

want the negative energies to stay over here and the positive energies on that

side. Now the task of creating this boundary is... They use a water-based

solution, different salts, sands, and herbs.

You're the nurturer. You're going to be the one to protect this house.

Anyone can do the sealing of the property, but it's best given to the

mother. This comes from the tradition and the understanding that it is women

who create and hold space.

Kay, are you ready to put your heart and soul into this?

She told me, I have to take control.

I have to tell the ghost to leave and he can't come back. It has to come through

my heart.

my mind, my soul, and I have to mean it.

This is our house.

No negative energies are welcome here. What we are creating is an energetic

wall that those negative energies cannot cross back in. This is our house.

I felt very empowered to know that I'm a part of getting this ghost out of our

house and never to return again.

And our friends.

As Kay completes the perimeter, Chris brings the last of the previous owner's

belongings to the curb.

All this junk, it's yours. It's like you. It's gone. It's all going to the

dump. Why don't you follow it? My intent about this ghost was hostile.

See all this stuff? It's yours.

In my heart, that ghost could rot.

If you feed an entity through negative emotions like fear or anger, it can

create a doorway for it to reenter.

You're baiting it.

You're asking it for a fight.

The children are invited back into the house to celebrate and seal the

cleansing.

Okay? I want you to think positive thoughts. I want you to think light

being all around us, okay?

We called in all of the energies of the universe that are within sacred law that

bring light and love, and we attempted to fill that house with as much love and

light as we possibly could so that there wasn't room for any darkness in the

house anywhere.

May there be no more darkness in this house. No more darkness.

May there be only light. Only light.

Thank you for having me here.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for preparing us. No, thank you. I'm glad I could help.

I think the cleanse worked.

I mean, instantaneously. I mean, you knew.

You knew. You could feel it. We felt peace in our house.

It's the first time since we moved into the house that I felt like we were us

again. I felt a sincere sense of relief.

Four weeks later.

The cleansing still holds.

Chris, now rested, takes up running again, only to be watched

by a familiar figure.

For Chris Gibbons, an early morning jog becomes a run-in with terror.

The ghost he banished from his property months ago is lurking just a few blocks

away.

There was no doubt in my mind that that was the ghost.

If it's still hanging around, then it's still attached to that environment in

some way, shape, or form.

That would mean that this entity was trying to cross back across and get back

into Chris's house.

May God rebuke him.

We humbly pray.

Fearing a return of the ghost, Chris leads his family on a nightly cleansing

of the house.

I made it my point to cleanse the house, and I also mixed my own Catholic

traditions with Catholic prayers. For the ruin of lost soul.

Amen.

Chris performs the cleansing ritual every night.

For weeks.

But the family tires of it.

You know, I was thinking tonight we could really focus on the third floor.

Chris would come home from work and say, let's do the ritual. And I'm like, I

don't want to do the ritual anymore.

I'm done with this ritual.

This is no way to live.

I quit. I gave up. I mean, the kids and I need you.

That's fine.

I can do it myself.

So the ghost had defeated me.

Chris continues the cleansing ritual alone.

I ask for whatever lives in this cabinet to be ripped from the earth and sent to

a place where evil lives.

I ask for whatever lives in this cabinet to be ripped from the earth and sent to

a place where evil lives.

Chris consciously realizes he's in another of his terror dreams.

And he can control his movements.

Oh.

I know what's going on.

I'm in a paranormal dream. You're not going to get me this time.

It's set to a place where evil lives!

And I hit him.

You know, with my fists, it felt good. I like to think I'm a peaceful person,

really, at my heart. And here I am, horribly beating someone senseless, you

know. And I thought, you know, this is what I've come to.

Chris realizes that he has tried every approach to attack and defend against

the entity, except one, letting go of his anger toward the ghost.

In putting my anger down and trying to deal with this spirit, I really did come

to see us as equal creations. He exists because God created him. I exist because

God created me.

I really called on everything that I thought was good and right in the

universe to come here and to show him and to encourage him to do something

about making a different choice for himself.

Dear Lord, please confirm upon the lost soul in this house all of your

love and light.

When I approached the Spirit with a sense of loving intent and a sense of

forgiveness, when I made that shift,

That was the end of it, as far as I was concerned.

Chris believes the entity has left their home.

Amen. I loved him out because I couldn't make him leave.

The family may never be able to prove that the ghost is gone.

But years have passed since the haunting.

And the Gibbons clan has seen no sign of the entity that threatened to destroy

them.

It was out of love that the ghost left.

And it was out of love that we stayed together through the whole thing.

Hey, are we ready to bring some music?

I think having survived this haunting, that we as a family have gotten really

close. Can I get an amen?

Amen!

One, two, three, four!

Our kids, I think, are very proud of us for what we...

We've gone through and what we've done to get rid of the ghost, especially

their father.

But for the patriarch of the Gibbons clan, the lack of definitive proof that

the ghost has permanently disappeared will always leave haunting doubts.

I don't know that it's over. I mean, I don't know what choice the ghost made. I

hope that he has truly moved on.

But if he wants to come back, I know how to deal with him.